![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
(no subject)
I have fallen rather behind on booklogging; the idea is to catch up before the end of the year. Uh. We will see. Anyways, towards that end, several pretty much unrelated ones for today!
I saw Sherrill Tippins' February House on sale in the bookstore where I volunteer, and - did not immediately buy it, because, budget, but did go out and immediately check it out of the library, because it looked like exactly the sort of dead-author gossip I am most shamefully fond of. W.H. Auden and Carson McCullers and Benjamin Britten and Gypsy Rose Lee! Chilling in a house together in Brooklyn while they all try to write Epic Works and entertain the entire literary world of the 1930s and squabble about who gets the piano and who, in a houseful of Artistic Types, ends up doing the cooking and the dishes! (Answer: Benjamin Britten gets the piano, after an epic bitchfight with another resident; Gypsy Rose Lee gets sick of Artistic Squalor and hires a cook. Actually, Gypsy Rose Lee tended to come out the sanest and awesomest in all these stories, as everyone else is like "GYPSY ROSE LEE COME BE OUR STRIPPER WITH A HEART OF GOLD, NO WACKY BOHEMIAN HOUSEHOLD IS COMPLETE WITHOUT ONE" and Gypsy Rose Lee is like "Fine, until I get bored." And then she is like "This was fun for a while, kids, and much thanks helping me complete my awesome stripper mystery novel, but now I have a real job to get back to, what with being the most famous stripper in the world and all. Have fun!" It is possible that I ended the book with a giant girlcrush on her.) So basically the book was everything I hoped it would be; the one thing I might say is that the author often goes to great lengths to appear nonjudgmental, when occasionally there were things I thought it would be kind of okay to be a little judgmental about. For example: the time when Auden was like "Hey Benjamin Britten, we need to hook you up with some vulnerable 16-year-old boys stat!" Oh Auden. I know you were a British public school teacher, but: NOT OKAY.
And then after that my list got disrupted, because the sequel to The Lion Hunter, Elizabeth Wein's The Empty Kingdom, came in for me at the library and I dove for it. And it is awesome and I think my favorite of the series so far. That one scene in the middle with Medraut and the chains and the code-talking is pretty much dramatic tension incarnate, it is seriously impressive! I had to go back and reread it again just to admire it. I do have to say, though, that for such a smart kid it takes Telemakos way too long to get that he is being groomed for Abreha's successor. You would think after the second or third time someone remarks, "Hey Telemakos, that brand is exactly the same as the one all the kings wear! How weird is that!" that he would catch on . . .
While I was at the library getting The Empty Kingdom, I also picked up Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody, which I had been meaning to reread. Although I love all things Diana Wynne Jones of course, this one was never my favorite when I was little; it is still not my favorite of hers, possibly just because I am not a dog person, but I think I appreciated it a lot more as a book this time around. The plot follows Sirius - the Dog Star - who, as penalty for a crime he didn't commit, is reborn as a mortal dog and sent to look for a mysterious item that inconveniently changes in its size and shape all the time and that he can't quite remember anyways. The book is really well done in terms of portraying a powerful and intelligent consciousness trying to use a much less powerful and conscious brain to think, and being constrained by the limitations of form. As usual, Diana Wynne Jones also does a very good job with conveying the dysfunctionality of the family that takes Sirius in, and the tensions surrounding the political situation, and though Duffy is a little too straight-up evil stepmother for me - and Kathleen honestly a little too straight-up good - I really like Duffy's sons Basil and Robin, and how legitimately messed up they are by the environment they're raised in. So, this one I respect rather than adore, but as is usual for Diana Wynne Jones, recommended still!
I saw Sherrill Tippins' February House on sale in the bookstore where I volunteer, and - did not immediately buy it, because, budget, but did go out and immediately check it out of the library, because it looked like exactly the sort of dead-author gossip I am most shamefully fond of. W.H. Auden and Carson McCullers and Benjamin Britten and Gypsy Rose Lee! Chilling in a house together in Brooklyn while they all try to write Epic Works and entertain the entire literary world of the 1930s and squabble about who gets the piano and who, in a houseful of Artistic Types, ends up doing the cooking and the dishes! (Answer: Benjamin Britten gets the piano, after an epic bitchfight with another resident; Gypsy Rose Lee gets sick of Artistic Squalor and hires a cook. Actually, Gypsy Rose Lee tended to come out the sanest and awesomest in all these stories, as everyone else is like "GYPSY ROSE LEE COME BE OUR STRIPPER WITH A HEART OF GOLD, NO WACKY BOHEMIAN HOUSEHOLD IS COMPLETE WITHOUT ONE" and Gypsy Rose Lee is like "Fine, until I get bored." And then she is like "This was fun for a while, kids, and much thanks helping me complete my awesome stripper mystery novel, but now I have a real job to get back to, what with being the most famous stripper in the world and all. Have fun!" It is possible that I ended the book with a giant girlcrush on her.) So basically the book was everything I hoped it would be; the one thing I might say is that the author often goes to great lengths to appear nonjudgmental, when occasionally there were things I thought it would be kind of okay to be a little judgmental about. For example: the time when Auden was like "Hey Benjamin Britten, we need to hook you up with some vulnerable 16-year-old boys stat!" Oh Auden. I know you were a British public school teacher, but: NOT OKAY.
And then after that my list got disrupted, because the sequel to The Lion Hunter, Elizabeth Wein's The Empty Kingdom, came in for me at the library and I dove for it. And it is awesome and I think my favorite of the series so far. That one scene in the middle with Medraut and the chains and the code-talking is pretty much dramatic tension incarnate, it is seriously impressive! I had to go back and reread it again just to admire it. I do have to say, though, that for such a smart kid it takes Telemakos way too long to get that he is being groomed for Abreha's successor. You would think after the second or third time someone remarks, "Hey Telemakos, that brand is exactly the same as the one all the kings wear! How weird is that!" that he would catch on . . .
While I was at the library getting The Empty Kingdom, I also picked up Diana Wynne Jones' Dogsbody, which I had been meaning to reread. Although I love all things Diana Wynne Jones of course, this one was never my favorite when I was little; it is still not my favorite of hers, possibly just because I am not a dog person, but I think I appreciated it a lot more as a book this time around. The plot follows Sirius - the Dog Star - who, as penalty for a crime he didn't commit, is reborn as a mortal dog and sent to look for a mysterious item that inconveniently changes in its size and shape all the time and that he can't quite remember anyways. The book is really well done in terms of portraying a powerful and intelligent consciousness trying to use a much less powerful and conscious brain to think, and being constrained by the limitations of form. As usual, Diana Wynne Jones also does a very good job with conveying the dysfunctionality of the family that takes Sirius in, and the tensions surrounding the political situation, and though Duffy is a little too straight-up evil stepmother for me - and Kathleen honestly a little too straight-up good - I really like Duffy's sons Basil and Robin, and how legitimately messed up they are by the environment they're raised in. So, this one I respect rather than adore, but as is usual for Diana Wynne Jones, recommended still!